After 244 years, Encyclopaedia Britannica is shelving its venerable printed edition in favor of its Web-based version, completing a digital transition and marking the end of one of longest chapters in publishing history.

"We just decided that it was better for the brand to focus on what really the future is all about," said Jorge Cauz, 50, president of the Chicago-bsased company since 2004. "Our database is very large now, much larger than can fit in the printed edition. Our print set version is an abridged version of what we have online."

In the dark days before the Internet, before television, before radio, before the United States was even a country, there was the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Neatly bound and brimming with facts, figures and illustrations, it was the go-to authority on just about everything -- a repository of all human knowledge distilled into alphabetized volumes and tucked on a shelf.

Founded in 1768 in Scotland and headquartered in Chicago since 1935, Encyclopaedia Britannica was marketed door-to-door for generations, a robust business that employed thousands and sold more than 100,000 sets as recently as 1990, its best year ever, when it generated $650 million in revenue.

Within a few years, print sales began to tumble, as consumers opted for home computers bundled with CD-ROM encyclopedias instead of the $1,500 leather-bound sets. More recently, the rise of high-speed Internet and Wikipedia shifted reference libraries online, with only a few thousand copies of the printed version trickling out each year to libraries, schools and a handful of neo-Luddite homeowners, according to Cauz.

The last run in 2010 produced about 12,000 sets of a new 32-volume copyright based of the 15th edition, a version which first rolled off the presses in 1974. There are about 4,000 sets left, selling for $1,395 each on the Britannica web site. After they are gone, the iconic publication will be relegated to history.

"This is probably going to be a collector's item," Cauz said. "This is going to be as rare as the first edition, because the last print run of our last copyright was one of the smallest print runs."

So will CDs, DVDs, and even personal computers. We will likely have sort of combo Kindle, iPAD, iPHONE, iPOD or equivalent and we will do ALL our business on line. That's why I'm planning to move to a luxurious survival shelter on one of the moons of one of the gas giants. I figure the end of the world is coming when this stuff takes over.

BTW, Joe, it looks like you are selling-off your collection of Anglicana. What gives?

Jim

"non omnis moriar" . . . Horace, Odes

"Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati" . . . Red Green Show

"They see well that all who speak are nothing, for they shall fadeaway with the sound of their words, but the Lord endures forever.". . . Thomas a Kempis, THE IMITATION OF CHRIST, Book 4, Chapter 14, No. 4

jbc1949 wrote:
BTW, Joe, it looks like you are selling-off your collection of Anglicana. What gives?

Jim

A grudging but fairly inescapable realization that, for better or worse, Anglicanorum Coetibus marks the end of serious Anglican-Roman dialogue. (I say serious because the usual ecumenical glad-handing will likely continue ad infinitum.) Rome has now spoken on the matter. There will be no sui juris Anglo-Catholic Church. There will be no conditional ordinations. Married priests will be a dwindling anomoly. The Sarum Rite is dead. The BCP will haunt the Book of Divine Worship like a spectre. And of course the numbers of converts will be embarassingly small.

We move on.

As some of you know -- those few who still walk these empty Forum halls -- for years I have argued, and prayed, for a recognition by Rome of the possible validity of Anglican Holy Orders at least as they are found in the Anglican diaspora/Continuum, so that Anglican clerics who swim the Tiber might be (re)ordained conditionally (as John Jay Hughes and Graham Leonard were) after the necessary background checks, etc. That door has now been closed and the bolt has been shot home. I will not dispute what the Church's Magisterium has settled.

That is, essentially, why I am selling off much (though not all) of my Anglicana. These resources are now pretty much useless to me.

I don't think the Anglican approach to Rome ever really stood a chance, mainly because of the group that did the approaching. I think Rome saw it for what it was and acted accordingly. While some of the approachers probably meant well, it turned out to be Hepworth's power trip. Now, he's been handed his mitre by the TAC and Rome doesn't want him. Yes, we move on.

I suspect that Apb. Hepworth never seriously believed that Rome would welcome him back as a cleric. He did his duty, though, from an ecumenical perspective in promoting/facilitating some sort of re-union.

"non omnis moriar" . . . Horace, Odes

"Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati" . . . Red Green Show

"They see well that all who speak are nothing, for they shall fadeaway with the sound of their words, but the Lord endures forever.". . . Thomas a Kempis, THE IMITATION OF CHRIST, Book 4, Chapter 14, No. 4